As a typical mid nite owl staring at her news for the day,I’d like to think we have a spherical earth. Well physically it is. But in reality, I really think it’s squared —cuboid in form with eight sharp corners, cutting others while it cuts itself.

We are so rigid and dogmatic in many ways more than we are supposed to be round and flexible, adaptable to different needs and social economic climates. That is, when we look at the the macroeconomical side of things. I often stand squished on train rides thinking about why we have these problems. And if we care to think a little longer, the similar problems we find here appears to be found in many other cities too.Yet our human intelligence in skills and knowlegde fail to solve them.

Elfinically, there are a couple of problems worth tinkering:

1. Why do we have energy problems in cities? Could a lap pool of water quench our thirst?

We are short of natural fuels. So we are looking at alternative fuels. Nothing wrong with alternative energies, but the actual nip of the energy crisis is that we, the smartest of all living beings alive on this planet, are utilising energy in very irresponsible ways unimaginable by even ourselves. It doesn’t really solve that much of a problem even if energy could be generated for the world could just come from a lap pool of water. Prof Daniel Nocera, Professor of Energy at MIT developed personalized energy that could help us to sustain in the long term. Regardless that I feel that we have not actually hit the base core of the problem, I love his ideas from an product innovation standpoint. Very creative ! And he delivers the hard core science in a simple and fun way that everyone enjoys it. I often feel that if we have more people like him, we’d solve plenty of other problems too. (We are way too silly in being complex creatures.)

Nocera also liked the idea of Solar energy and he plans to make it a very feasible alternative energy

I don’t usually like Chemistry more than Physics. But I honestly want to take his classes if I get the chance to. It’s often at such situations, that I often feel that hard core sciences are vital. Then again, when I often feel that the root problem is very much on the humanities perspective — that we are the genuine problem factor to solve. However, if we could sort our living habits together with Nocera’s energy innovation, our world would be in nirvana. When would that happen? I don’t know. But I would like to think its soon. We need it.

2. Why are we jam packed with people or cars ? Sometimes its a sardine packed sort of jam that consists of both people and vehicles.

Do we need cars in the first place? In many big cities in the world, it is so damn easy to get terrified by the stream of vehicles stuck in limbo. So stagnent that our roller blades may take us further than what our cars could take us. Yet we still want cars. Cars that drink both our money and energy; drive us not to our physical destination but drive us up the wall. Yet we give great business to car manufacturers. Strange isn’t it?

3. Social life trends. Relationships between people have changed. More complex in cities where different attractions are available. People tend to wonder between status and money most of the time. Even in marriages, it is common in the west to have pre-nups. Asia is catching up and I hope we will not surpass the divorce numbers in the west. It has a serious negative impact on the society as a whole. The west has a falling marriage rate because of the high divorce rates. As a result, more people choose to have partners and cohabit instead. I think it is a sad case. People may not realised it as such a culture has sunk in naturally as a whole, but if we start to compare cultures, it is easy to see how the high divorce rates link to a change in culture.

Also, in most urban areas, the genuine friendship at work, school or other general public areas; people have become to be more superficial in their manners and ethics. Often such leads to stress problems and many develop psychological problems that require professional help.

Why do you think new professions like psycholigsts, stress trainers etc come from? They emerge as we fail to simplify our thoughts about what life is and how our goals should be achieved. Health pays in the process. What goes around, comes around. Even if it needs to travel around all eight pointed corners.

We live in a strange world alright……but we can choose not to. Appropriate idiosyncracies is fine. Overdo it, and we’ll get a huge can of crazy worns which will make anyone squirm. Cheers for now…- Karen Fu

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